TOUR: Art Deco tour - TriBeCa and Civic Center (Itinerary No. 2)
2019-10-27 14:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York)
Reservations required. Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. $30 per person ($20 for MAS members). For information and registration, watch this space, or call the M.A.S. at 212-935-3960.
Based on Itinerary No. 2 in New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture.
This tour begins at the edge of the financial district and continues into the Civic Center with the Federal Post Office, a WPA product of the Modern Classic; and three remarkable municipal buildings at the northern tip of the Foley Square courts district: the New York State Building, the Health, Hospitals and Sanitation Building and the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse. Star architect of the walk is Ralph Walker, designer of three communications-related behemoths: the delightfully decorative New York Telephone Company headquarters, the ponderously massive Western Union Building, and the Long Lines Building which is both massive and decorative.

NYU – Five-session course – New York in the Jazz Age: Art Deco architecture from TriBeCa to the Upper West Side – Session No. 5
2019-10-31 14:00 - 16:40
Sponsored by New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Education. Tuesday afternoons, September 19 to October 17. For information and registration, click here.
This course traces the brash new style of art deco, which transformed New York into a modern metropolis. Follow the style’s impact on five Manhattan neighborhoods, mixing commercial with residential buildings. One walk covers the downtown neighborhoods of Tribeca and the Civic Center. Two more cover south Midtown: Murray Hill and Gramercy Park on the east and the Garment District on the west. A fourth looks at the upper edge of Midtown, from Bloomingdale’s on the east to 20th Century Fox on the west. And a fifth follows the transformation of residential architecture on the Upper West Side along Broadway and Riverside Drive. The course instructor is Anthony W. Robins, award-winning guide and author of the newly published book, New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz-Age Architecture(SUNY Press).

Tour: Manhattan's Art Deco Interiors
2020-01-12 14:00 - 16:00
Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. $30 ($20 MAS members). Reservations required. To register, call 212-935-3960 or register on-line.
The phrase “Art Deco New York” generally conjures romantic images of Manhattan skyscrapers. But just as remarkable as the towers are their sumptuous interiors – which are also far more comfortable to visit on a cold winter’s day. On this tour, we’ll visit the publicly accessible interiors of not major Deco marvels: the Daily News Building, the Chrysler Building, and the International Building and RCA (now Comcast) tower at Rockefeller Center.

Tour: Manhattan's Art Deco Interiors
2020-02-16 14:00
Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. $30 ($20 MAS members). Reservations required. To register, call 212-935-3960 or register on-line.
The phrase “Art Deco New York” generally conjures romantic images of Manhattan skyscrapers. But just as remarkable as the towers are their sumptuous interiors – which are also far more comfortable to visit on a cold winter’s day. On this tour, we’ll visit the publicly accessible interiors of major Deco marvels: the Daily News Building, the Chrysler Building, and the International Building and RCA (now Comcast) tower at Rockefeller Center.

Tour: Art Deco East 42nd Street
2025-03-30 11:00 - 13:00, 2025-11-30 11:00 - 13:00
Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. Reservations required; click here for information and registration. ($35, $25 for MAS members).
This tour focuses on three of the finest Deco monuments in Midtown: the Daily News Building by Raymond Hood (1929), the Chanin Building by Sloane & Robertson (1927), and the Chrysler Building by William Van Alen (1930). Also included: the former American Radiator Building (Hood’s first in New York), the artsy East 44th Street cluster of the Beaux-Arts Institute and Beaux-Arts Apartments (Art Deco in style despite the names), and a look at nearby Tudor City, a classic example of what the city was building just before Art Deco hit town.

Tour: Art Deco Central Park West
2025-04-06 14:00 - 16:30
Reservations required. Sponsored by the Art Deco Society of New York $45 ($35 ADSNY members). For information and registration, click here.
A pleasant stroll along Central Park West for a closer look at the buildings that form Manhattan’s major residential skyline. We’ll see the great twin-towered skyscraper apartment buildings – the Century, the Majestic and the El Dorado – and other multi-colored jazz-age fantasies of high living overlooking the park.

Tour: Art Deco in the Fabulous Fifties
2025-04-27 11:00 - 13:00
Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. Reservations required; click here for information and registration. ($35, $25 for MAS members).
Starting on the far east side of Midtown at posh Beekman Place, we visit a handful of modernistic residences ranging from the former Panhellenic Tower, a redoubt for young professional women taking on the big city in the 1920s, to the fabulously wealthy River House to the more modestly middle-class Southgate apartments. Pushing westward into the commercial heart of Midtown we visit the spectacular but lesser-known General Electric Building (originally built for RCA) and continue with the Waldorf-Astoria, New York’s preeminent skyscraper hotel. We close with a brief look at Rockefeller Center, midtown Manhattan’s urbane urban wonderland.

Tour: Art Deco in Washington Heights
2025-11-02 11:00 - 13:00
Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. Reservations required. Reservations required; click here for information and registration. ($35, $25 for MAS members).
High up on a hill, its streets lined with modest but attractive six-story Art Deco apartment hoses, Washington Heights has more in common with West Bronx neighborhoods just across the Harlem River than with the rest of Manhattan. Many of the same architects who worked on the Grand Concourse also designed apartment buildings on or near Fort Washington Avenue – we will see work by Horace Ginsbern, Jacob Felson, Israel Crausman, Miller and Goldhammer, Charles Kreymborg, and H. Herbert Lillien. Two taller apartment buildings, by Boak and Paris, offer a more idiosyncratic take on the modernism of the 1930s. This walk with Anthony W. Robins will also include a one-story taxpayer, and one of the city’s few frankly Deco subway entrances. But the star attraction is the Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist (now the Hebrew Tabernacle of Washington Heights), one of perhaps a dozen or so Art Deco houses of worship anywhere in the city.

Tour: Rockefeller Center
2025-12-25 10:00 - 12:00
Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. Reservations required; click here for information and registration. ($35, $25 for MAS members).
Annual Christmas morning tour of Rockefeller Center, the private real-estate venture that has evolved into the public square of midtown Manhattan, and an urban wonderland during the holiday season. Discover the surprising history, remarkable art and stunning architecture of the development conceived as a new home for the Metropolitan Opera, but built instead as Radio City.
